Perhaps I’m just missing something with the missing Union tool. I know I used to find it in the icons previously, but now it just seems not to be there (so I give up and go to the menu, actually I’ve finally transitioned to the keyboard shortcut, which is faster anyway):
Whatever was happening to me all morning (with a somewhat messy model built on top of an imported image that the 3D part will need to fit) isn’t happening now. Sorry for the false alarm. Bodies when extruded are now snapping to other adjacent (touching) bodies in this design and in a test design I just created from scratch.
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It’s buggy too on my Mac. Most of the time, keyboard entry doesn’t work at all; I just get beeps. The escape key won’t back me out of an operation and the return key won’t commit changes.
When does this happen?
In the selection you have a construction plane, for which the Union tool is invalid, that’s why it doesn’t show up for that selection.
Okay, thanks for noticing that.
However, in the past it seems that the tools remained visible (before the recent updates to adapt the tools presented to the current condition) and when one tried to apply a tool inappropriately it gave you feedback (popup), saying why the tool could not be applied, which then led the user to a solution right then. The user, in this example, knows they want to merge the selected bodies with a union, the union tool tells them to drop the construction plane from the selection. They get to keep working smoothly.
However, in the example I recorded, the Union operation, that was hidden from the side tools (because of the construction plane, you say) works perfectly well from the Menu. The three bodies are joined and the construction plan is ignored (I just tested it again in that same file)–bodies joined, construction plane ignored. So I can/could perform the union operation on the selected bodies. Hiding the union tool made the effort harder.
Not to pile on, but in general my personal experience of software that shifts the ground under my feet, displaying a tool one moment and hiding it the next can be more disruptive than helpful. (Apple has been doing a lot of this in its interfaces in recent years.) Keep the selection of tools predictable and consistent (grey them out if necessary, as you do still for the constraint tools for example) and don’t leave the user wondering where the tool has gone. Particularly in this instance where it would have worked, and does work from the menu bar.
One other user perspective that hope may be helpful: I don’t do 3D design constantly, so when I come back to it (only in Shapr for the past few years) the (previous) complete list of tools serves as a reminder of the operations that might/could be available and at times suggests approaches I might not have been thinking about. Being able to glance at all the tools, shopping for an approach, as it were, suggests operations that can solve a problem. I do have the standard set of operations for 3D apps fairly well set in my memory, so I’ll get by well enough with them hiding and appearing, but I benefit from the crutch of seeing them in the toolbar and will miss this.
The tool hide/show logic ( or the Adaptive UI as we call it) has not changed with the new UI. The current update is almost exclusively a visual refresh, we have not touched the Adaptive UI’s logic. Regardless we could make the Adaptive UI more permissive - but that would come at the cost of almost always showing every tool for every selection combination, which would render this feature virtually useless. That’s why we still let you select the Union tool manually for an imperfect selection combination, and then we’ll just filter out those selection elements that are not a match for the Union tool.
Guess I latched on to a memory of Shapr talking about a greater focus on the Adaptive UI and the, what seemed changed to me, disappearance of the Union tool from the toolbar in a situation where it had been visible in the past. The past few days are the first I’ve had to look for and use the Union command from the menu bar. (I use Union a lot, almost always my last step before exporting–save a copy still editable in individual bodies, then union the whole thing and export, construction planes are frequent). I wasn’t even sure I’d find Union in the menu bar, but went looking when I got stuck. Guess it is a coincidence, but it seemed to me the Adaptive UI had changed (if not in the most recent update, then recently perhaps?). I have not been designing much recently, perhaps I’m only now encountering an earlier change.
In generally I’d be one vote toward a more permissive Adaptive UI.
Thanks,
It’s inconsistent. I’ll be working on one project and it happens and then I’ll work on another (or even close and reopen the same one) and it doesn’t happen.
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Are you using muktiple screens?
No, only my MacBook Pro screen. It happened again today when I first launched Shapr and opened a project to make some tweaks. After using the mouse to click out the numbers I needed a few times, the keyboard suddenly started working again.
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Thanks, we are investigating the issue.
I totally agree. The previous user interface was clearer and felt more vibrant and well-thought-out. It also better reflected the experience of this modern and user-friendly app. I used to feel happy just looking at Shapr3d! 
In the old UI, most of the icons played nicely together, sharing the same visual weight and a consistent design language. However, the new UI is somewhat messy, with some icons being very thin while others appear visually heavy.
Sometimes, the control points in the icons are black, and other times they are gray (even though these points serve the same purpose and should, therefore, look consistent).
Another example that doesn’t make sense is the “folder” symbol, which has three different appearances.
I truly hope that you return to the previous design language.
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With the latest release we’ve moved back the Undo/Redo buttons to the bottom left corner:
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